What Does Grass Fed Mean? Grass fed means that the livestock graze on growing pastures from birth until they are "finished". At Shew's Orchard, our livestock are "finished" (fattened) to a desired weight completely on hay and natural pasture grass. They receive no grain and spend no time in feedlots or confinement facilities.
       Products from pastured animals are ideal for human health. Very similar to wild game, they contain the amounts and kinds of nutrients that our bodies "expect" to be fed. The research suggests that switching to grass-fed products may reduce the risk of a number of diseases, including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
        Because grass-fed meat is so lean, it is also lower in calories. (Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.) A 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer has almost 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grain-fed steer. If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to grass-fed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year--without requiring any willpower or change in eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you'll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grass-fed meat, our national epidemic of obesity might begin to diminish.

               Although grass-fed meat is low in total fat and "bad" fat (including saturated fat), it has two to six times more omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. For example, of all the fats, they are the most heart friendly. People who have ample amounts of omega-3s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat. Remarkably, they are 50 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack.
        Omega-3s are essential for your brain as well. People with a diet rich in omega-3s are less likely to suffer from depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder (hyperactivity), or Alzheimer's disease.
        Another benefit of omega-3s is that they may reduce your risk of cancer. In animal studies, these essential fats have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and also kept them from spreading.  Although the human research is in its infancy, researchers have shown that omega-3s can slow or even reverse the extreme weight loss that accompanies advanced cancer and also hasten recovery from surgery.
      Omega-3s are most abundant in seafood and certain nuts and seeds such as flaxseeds and walnuts, but they are also found in animals raised on pasture. The reason is simple. Omega-3s are formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves and algae. Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. When cattle are taken off omega-3 rich grass and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on grain, they begin losing their store of this beneficial fat. Each day that an animal spends in the feedlot, its supply of omega-3s is diminished.

        Meat and dairy products from grass-fed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat called "conjugated linoleic acid" or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their products contain from three to five times more CLA than products from animals fed conventional diets.
       CLA may be one of our most potent defenses against cancer. In laboratory animals, a very small percentage of CLA --- a mere 0.1 percent of total calories ---greatly reduced tumor growth.  There is new evidence that CLA may also reduce cancer risk in humans. In a Finnish study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet, had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels.
Switching from grain-fed to grass-fed meat and dairy products places women in this lowest risk category.  Researcher Tilak Dhiman from Utah State University estimates that you may be able to lower your risk of cancer simply by eating the following grass-fed products each day: one glass of whole milk, one ounce of cheese, and one serving of meat. You would have to eat five times that amount of grain-fed meat and dairy products to get the same level of protection.

           In addition to being higher in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grass-fed animals is also higher in vitamin E. The meat from the pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than the meat from the feedlot cattle and, interestingly, almost twice as high as the meat from feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements.  In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and cancer. This potent antioxidant may also have anti-aging properties. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin E.

      To understand what's in our beef you must first understand what's in other beef.  One critical distinction is that most beef sold in stores comes from a feedlot. The other distinction is that the beef has been fed grain and corn (and other stuff).
Corn-Fed vs. Grass-fed
The Corn-Fed Myth. Corn-fed beef is sometimes touted as "superior" beef. In my opinion, feedlots use corn not because it enhances the taste of beef, or makes it more healthy. In fact, studies show that grass-fed beef improves nutrient value, and pasture lifestyle enhances taste. So why do feedlots use corn? Simple, because it's more cost-effective. Corn by-products are cheaper to buy than natural grasses such as alfalfa, or hay.
       So why do feedlots tout corn-fed as better tasting? Well it does promote more intramuscular fat in the cattle and some people do think fat tastes good, I guess. But, really, what else can they say and still hope to sell their product?
Store-Bought Ground Beef
             Remember two things: First, virtually all beef purchased in retail stores comes from cattle that are corn/grain-fed on feedlots. And second, usually the least desirable parts of their beef end up becoming ground meat. An article in the Wall Street Journal on January 27, 2004 with the Headline: U.S. to Give Up on Mad-Cow Search, that was primarily about the failure of the USDA to locate the herd mates of the one infected dairy cow that was found to be BSE positive on Dec. 24, 2003, said it better than I can: "... the USDA's mad-cow investigation appears to be running out of steam. Ron De Haven, the USDA's chief veterinarian, yesterday said it is likely that several of the dairy cattle that grew up with the infected Holstein cow and accompanied it from Canada two years ago have probably already been culled because of their relatively advanced age. The fate of most old dairy cows is to be turned into hamburger..." Well. there you have it.
       Our Grassfed beef comes from animals raised right here on the farm. They are about 1 years old at the time of processing. They are not old culled dairy cattle.

        The federal government now regulates what can be called "certified organic" and we are NOT certified. Of course a farm could be officially called "certified organic" and still feed their cattle very little grass. There's nothing in the rules about being "certified organic" that requires these "organic" producers to feed grass only.  Here's what we can say: Our beef has NEVER been implanted with artificial hormones NOR have they been given sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics. They eat only grass so whether their feed contains antibiotics or hormones or anything is moot, but just to be clear: the answer is NO! Neither do we inject our meats with solutions and chemicals to hold those solutions. We are a true all natural producer of grass-fed cattle. That's why we open our farm up for visitors -- so they can see where their beef comes from.
Is our Angus Beef safe from Mad Cow (BSE)?
This question comes up all of the time now with the discovery of the one case of BSE from the dairy farm in the Northwest. I'm glad to answer it because it means people are becoming increasingly interested in making sure they know where there food is coming from and that means only good things for an operation like ours. Our beef comes from cattle who have been fed only 100% grass. Mad Cow is absolutely no concern with our cattle. Our animals have never been fed any feed with any animal parts nor have we imported any cattle from outside the US. Our Angus beef comes from cattle born and raised on our farm. That's why we run out of beef from time to time.